Pulse

Transformation always starts with a small action. In 1990 the BBC made a seemingly small gesture, but its impact was huge. A programme they showed, ‘The Transformers’, elicited over 300 positive enquiries. The programme was on new teaching methods, how one man, Matthew Lipman, the philosopher and teacher, had created communities for learning amongst kids abandoned by the education system in New York. The BBC simply circulated the names and addresses of the 300 enquiries. From one very simple and small act by a BBC executive grew a network in the UK that developed into the Philosophy for Children movement. One person recognised a personal responsibility to make a difference in the world and they created a massive impact on thousands.

Robert Goodsell

Time as a dimension goes and absorption in the moment is absolute. The rest of the world fades to nothingness - there is just you and the creative act of doing and being. Sometimes it lasts a moment and sometimes it lasts an hour. If I'm visiting a gallery or museum I know it has inspired me when, in an instant, I no longer want to be there but somewhere else making something.

Andrew Leith

The Sydney Opera house is one of the most iconic buildings ever built. It captures Australia's history, vision and self belief. There is probably no building in the new world that captures the soul of a country more. But what really grabbed me were not the vast concrete waves but the tiles! 1,056,006 of them. Not your ordinary tiles from B&Q. A chevron-patterned sea of glossy white- and matte-cream-coloured Swedish-made tiles. They blew me away. I spent hours just looking at them. It is the tiles that make the building shine like a beacon of hope at the mouth of Sydney Harbour at every sunrise and sunset. Beauty, as ever, is very much in the detail.

Richard Pearce

Bolivia. It's 1990. It's cold. It's wet. We're so tired. So out of breath. The map is useless. One line on a piece of paper with about three features to guide us. We started the day at about 4000m and climb to the summit at 5000m. We despair that we won't reach the top before nightfall. We start to panic - we are a million miles from civilisation. All by ourselves. Literally at the top of the world and a freezing cloud is descending. We know that we have to cross over the summit before nightfall. The last 100m are the most difficult. The path is vertical. We are now at almost 5000m. The air is so thin that we can barely put one foot in front of the other without being totally exhausted. It seems an impossible feat. It's scary. But step by slow step we finally get to the top. The relief and the achievement are so overwhelming that we just sit down and cry.

Jacqueline Milton

Washington DC. I’m 18 – travelling abroad on my own for the first time. I'd just walked through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. On a grassy mound an ex-soldier was playing the last post. It was totally unrehearsed. He'd just turned up to show his respects and walked to the top of the nearest hill and played his bugle. Like everybody there, I was frozen to the spot. Tears flooded down my cheeks. Most of the people there were not tourists but people who had either fought in Vietnam or whose sons, brothers, uncles or cousins had died out there. It could have been any war memorial in any country in the world and I would have felt the same. Alive. Lucky. Sad. Grateful. The sound of the lone bugler connecting us to the people we love and who care for us. For those brief seconds, war, sacrifice and death moved from the abstract to something that felt very real.

Simon Milton

I’m from the ‘experience chasing’ generation. You won’t find War and Peace on our bookshelf. We’re into bolder titles (ones with big numbers) - ‘1001 things to do before you die’ and ‘99 of the world's wackiest festivals'. For us life experience can be bought over the counter, at a travel agents. It’s got to be big, it’s got to be exciting but most importantly it’s got to be different (I know someone who refused to walk the Inca trail after hearing a friend had been the year before).

Just recently I read 176 words that will stay with me. I put down my copy of Time Out and felt tightness in my throat and a tiny cascading sensation…

It ain’t what you do, It’s what it does to you
It ain’t what you do, It’s what it does to you
I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi's and a bowie knife
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

I have not padded through the Taj Mahal,
barefoot, listening to the space between
each footfall picking up and putting down
its print against the marble floor. But I
skimmed flat stones across Black Moss on a day
so still I could hear each set of ripples
as they crossed. I felt each stone's inertia
spend itself against the water; then sink.

I have not toyed with a parachute cord
while perched on the lip of a light-aircraft;
but I held the wobbly head of a boy
at the day centre, and stroked his fat hands.

And I guess that the tightness in the throat
and the tiny cascading sensation
somewhere inside us are both part of that
sense of something else. That feeling, I mean.

-Simon Armitage

Kate Adlington

Kai Shun knives. I have no idea whether they are the ‘best’ in the world, but they are as close to perfection as anything I’ve ever seen or used. They are weighty, which makes them a joy to hold. Clearly, these knives have been forged and tested and re-forged and re-tested time and time again. It shows. They are exquisitely balanced and razor sharp, which makes the knife-handling experience effortless. Think of the craft and precision that go into making a Samurai sword and you’re along the right lines. And boy do they look good. You can see the grain of the steel against the light, shimmering like fish scales. Choosing to use a blender, grater or garlic crusher over chopping, pureeing, slicing and dicing with a Kai Shun, is a bit like buying a Jaguar XKR and travelling in the passenger seat.

Greg Sheridan

Most things can be improved with a bit of ingenuity, luckily for me. The day I got married went with a bang, literally. When the ‘I do's’ were done, ten of my best friends popped top hats that blew streamers ten feet into the air. They were an audible, visual, emotional feast that made an unforgettable day totally unique. My dad made them for us, by the way.

In your face confetti.

Lauren Kemp

I’m crossing Russia, 20 hours into a daunting 56 hour train journey, time is passing very slowly and I’m bouncing off the walls. I’m sensing the Russian lady opposite would like me to stop drawing her and I really should pace myself with my book before it’s all over too soon. So I stop, just stop to watch the world go by. I realise at this moment that there is nowhere else I’d rather be and nothing else I’d rather be doing. I’m no longer worried about where I’m going or how to get there. My only concern is that I don’t forget to enjoy the journey.

Zoe Lester

Exit Waterloo at the South Bank. Walk north down Chicheley Road, politely smile at the lady with the newspapers, then turn left onto Belvedere Road. Avoiding pigeons, cut through the Jubilee Gardens towards the London Eye. Look up in amazement at a great human engineering feat. Turn right and continue for 100 metres. Walk up the steps to the Hungerford Bridge and continue. Inhale. The London skyline. Exhale. It’s a gorgeous day. Continue to walk along the bridge. Millions of people over hundreds of years have made this amazing city. This is what it’s all about. You’ve arrived.

Laura Waram

Wind back to 1977 and the long, discontented summer of punk, when a small group of people were railing against a dysfunctional society and its complacent music. One song in particular – Peaches, by The Stranglers – stayed in my head all summer long. Not necessarily my favourite, not even necessarily punk. But for me it was seminal. Massive changes were taking place in popular culture that would shape the way that I and many others of my age would come to view the world. Peaches was my entry point to all of that. Some 30 years on and its black riff is still with me.

Simon Taylor